Annie Kantar

Cling of the World
November 17, 2022 Kantar Annie

CLING OF THE WORLD

 

What could it mean
to imagine you,
then try to make ourselves
into one we believe
would please you?

 

What could that be,
and what is it to be,
and what good
is it to know what
it means, virtue?

 

Can’t you see
how you confuse this
everyday Jew, who trusts
what she sees?
I have no idea, no

 

Idea, no descriptive
tendency, no
numinous singular
from which I can
choose. . .

 

Only a translation,
impure, plural,
the cling of the world,
that-place-where
a verb’s got to do.

Annie Kantar’s work has appeared in The American Literary Review, Barrow Street, Bennington Review, Birmingham Review, Cincinnati Review, Literary ImaginationPlume Anthology 9Poetry DailyPoetry International, Rattle, Tikkun, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. Her translation from the Hebrew of With This Night, the final collection of poetry that Leah Goldberg published during her lifetime, appeared with University of Texas Press (2011), and was shortlisted for the ALTA Translation Prize. The recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and Fulbright Scholarship, she recently published her literary translation of The Book of Job (Koren 2021). Her collection of poems, Means To Be Lucky, is forthcoming with Poets & Traitors Press this spring.